


Something Guys Do

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: DADT, First Time, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-13
Updated: 2010-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jack offers to join Daniel in a little offworld stress-relief, Daniel is surprised and turned on, and figures it's something he can handle. Just something guys do, right? And denial is a river in Egypt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Something Guys Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catspaw](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Catspaw).



"Ants in your pants, Daniel? Or in your sleeping bag?"

Jack's voice was laconic and not curious. Daniel winced. He'd been tossing and turning; rude of him.

"Sorry; sorry. It's. I can't get to sleep." Teal'c had first watch, and Jack and Daniel both should have been out like lights already.

Jack's reply was a noncommittal grunt, but Daniel knew Jack probably was a couple of hairs from annoyed. If he were Jack, he would be. Daniel shouldn't be restless. Daniel should be asleep. The planet was friendly and known; the mission routine. But besides wanting to get to sleep already, Jack was probably annoyed and impatient, because he no doubt knew the state of Daniel's mind, which was more troubled than usual, even for him. Ever since Kiera (he refused to let his mind range further back, at least for the moment), Daniel had been restless with an irritated self-consciousness that, he was chagrined to notice, had even Jack treating him with courtly politeness. Kid-glove handling from Jack was ... weird. Wrong. The night was crisp, the surroundings unthreatening, and they all should have been ready, willing and able to rest. But Daniel was restless.

He thrashed around some more, wished futilely that Jack had drawn first watch because then he would have been able to resort to... Well, he could still resort to that, actually, in order to get to sleep. Daniel sighed and sat up. Jack turned over and looked at him. The light from the double moons was so bright, he could see the outline of Jack's profile.

"Sorry. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna go out and. You know. I'll just. I'll be right back." Daniel shoved his sleeping bag away and fumbled in the silvery dark for his boots. Jack didn't roll over and wait. Jack, oddly, was sitting up. He was methodically pulling his boots on, too, purposeful and efficient. He wasn't mad; he wasn't jerking things or slamming around.

"Want some company?" Jack didn't look up, just kept up with the lacing.

_Oh my god. He couldn't. He misunderstood. He thinks I need guarding. No, not that; he knows Teal'c's out there. What the..._

"Jack, really, I. No. I'm gonna. Well."

"Take a leak." Flat disbelief with a bottom note of sarcastic humor. Jack, apparently, indeed knew very well what he was going to do out there. Daniel flushed.

'No, I." _He can't be..._

"But -- it's more fun with company."

_The fuck?!_

Jack, having laced his boots, and having strapped his Beretta back on, patted Daniel on the knee and crab-walked (how could he do that so gracefully?) to the tent entrance, where he waited, one hand on the flap near the zipper.

Daniel continued to lace his boots, embarrassed, resolving to get away from Jack somehow and just go through with this, now that Jack had apparently accessed his always-surprising telepathic skills. Jack seemed to alternate between reading Daniel's mind and being willfully dense. Daniel sighed. Then his mind replayed, not only what Jack had said, but the tone. Jack really did mean it. Jack intended to -- with him. Daniel stilled, images crashing into each other in his mind. His hands paused on his laces. He registered that Jack was waiting, and sheer astonishment carried Daniel to his hands and knees, past Jack and out of the tent into the moonlight. He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. Unbelievable: Jack knew what he was doing, and had invited himself along. Truly. For real. This was disturbing, surprising, and. Well. Admit it. Exciting. Daniel had a sense of events overtaking him, of things speeding up, careening. He looked sidelong at Jack, who was looking sidelong at him under his cap brim, and keying his radio. Teal'c was walking the perimeter; of course Jack would check in. Daniel's eyes widened as he quickly brought up and discarded some outrageous things Jack might say. Reality, while still surreal, did not rise to that level of whacked. At least not yet. Daniel felt like giggling. He suppressed it.

"I'm with Daniel, taking a little stroll. Not to worry."

"Acknowledged."

Jack walked past Daniel, and, being vestless, slipped the radio in his pants pocket. Daniel followed, giddy. Following Jack again, into yet another unforeseen adventure.

Jack walked into the grove that protected their camp on the north, looking around carefully, as if assessing possible cover for a firefight. Daniel was content to watch. Several yards into the cover of the woods, Jack put his back to a large tree, a rather oakish tree, Daniel thought. There was very little underbrush. Daniel stopped, facing him, and Jack cocked his head, indicating Daniel should stand beside him.

_How did he get to be in charge of this?_

Daniel dutifully turned. He heart sped up, because Jack edged over until their elbows were touching, and he looked around, frowning slightly, as he opened his pants; something Daniel had seen him do before, many times, not trying to look too closely, of course, when Jack had taken a leak in woods like this on a dozen worlds, and even a couple of times in Jack's own back yard, after too many beers and not enough hamburgers -- most recently a night the general's granddaughters and Cassie had come to play croquet. How Jack came to own a croquet set anyway was something Daniel didn't really want to think about too much, too many dragons of memory, but the fact remained that Jack's garage was like a Sports Academy warehouse, neatly stuffed with game equipment of every description and age.

But Daniel dragged his squirming thoughts back to the moment, because Jack's button fly was neatly V-ed open, and he hooked a thumb in the waistband of his briefs and with his other elbow pushed Daniel back the half-step he took, too, putting their backs against the tree trunk.

"To lean on," Jack explained, in answer to Daniel's questioning stare. He was calm and neutral, just a little of the funny, as if explaining some finer point of how the radio worked or something.

_Deer in the headlights,_ Daniel thought, and put his hands to his buttons, and then Jack pulled his dick out, over the band of elastic, just like that, but not like he was gonna pee. Daniel caught his breath. Jack looked into the distance, thumbing the head a little, as if to encourage it along, and Daniel couldn't look away. He forgot what he was supposed to be doing, and Jack had to nudge him. Because he was looking at Jack's half-hard dick, in Jack's hand, with permission. With the expectancy that he would look, should look. Jack's dick swelled a little more, stood up a little taller, as Daniel watched. Smooth, thick, silvery gray in the moonlight, all color washed away. Daniel quickly popped his buttons and loosened his belt. Like Jack, he shoved his briefs down, still looking at Jack's hand, caressing. Daniel swallowed, licked suddenly dry lips and when he finally fumbled himself in hand, he was much harder than Jack.

Hard as a rock was the next point on the scale, because, matter of factly, Jack shoved his briefs down a bit further and then reached under Daniel's elbow. Jack, reaching for him. Daniel froze, almost whiting out with amazed arousal. Jack took hold of his wrist and pulled it under his own arm, and smoothly replaced Daniel's hand on Daniel's dick with his own. Jack, touching him, warm and rough. Jack, squeezing him, and putting Daniel's hand on himself. Daniel stifled a whimper. He glanced away from the surreal picture of his own hand, wrapped around Jack O'Neill's erection, and glanced at Jack's face. It was focused, intent, eyes narrowed, looking ahead, not at their hands.

Jack squeezed him again, and Daniel gasped. He felt Jack sway toward him and sway back, and he tried to get with the program -- curl his hand tighter around Jack, move it. The whipsaw of sensation and sight, the mirror-images that were real and warm, were overwhelming.

Whatever he had thought to expect here, in this whole cracked scenario, it wasn't as vivid and intense as the actual thing. Jack's hand was caressing _him_, a little firmer, a little tighter, with each trip up and down, and Daniel might have made a choked little noise, which was echoed by a quiet, abbreviated moan low in Jack's throat.

Jack had leaned his head back against the tree trunk, eyes half closed. Daniel didn't know where to look -- at his own hand on Jack's dick, or at Jack's hand on his own, or Jack's intent face, and he rapidly lost his place again, because Jack was hypnotizing him and stimulating him all at once. A weird, illicit intimacy, and Daniel was stunned by the idea as much as by the sensations.

He finally settled on looking at his hand on Jack, and only feeling what Jack expertly did to him, which was why he was so unprepared that his knees almost buckled when he felt Jack's hand disengage. His dick felt cool and lonely, suddenly. Jack lifted his hand to his mouth, and he carefully swiped a slow tongue across the palm, and when he took hold of Daniel again, it was wet as well as warm. Daniel moaned, trying to be quiet, and had to lean more of his weight back against the tree, and when he could compose himself enough to do so, he licked his hand, too.

He felt a kind of glittery competition start to build and shimmer in his belly along with his climbing arousal. It was fun, it was a trip, it was a game with all winners, no losers. He smiled and let his eyes fall half shut and moved his hand faster, and Jack's hand sped up, too.

"Told you the tree was a good idea," Jack said, his voice low and rumbly. It was probably the sexiest thing Daniel had ever heard.

"Yes, you did," Daniel returned, brave now, and he licked his hand again. Because. Because it was better. He'd done this before, years and years ago, but it was never something he thought he would do with Jack, never ever, in a billion years, in any reality.

Spit mixed with pre-ejaculate, hands moved faster, and pretty soon Daniel was blind and panting, forcing himself to stay quiet, so glad for whatever fucked up military training allowed Jack to do this and still be the one to keep watch, too. Because whenever he flicked his eyes to Jack, Jack was looking into the woods, and Daniel could tell he was not totally lost in the moment. Amazing.

Sensation mixed up: Blurring pleasure from his groin. The daring flare of knowing it was Jack. Jack's silky cock in his fist, warm and wet and alive. Jack's body heat, right there, right at his elbow. The occasional friendly bump where their arms crossed. Jack's lips, parted in the moonlight.

Daniel moaned, a sound torn out of him, because he was going, going gone, and he had to look down for it, had to look at himself and Jack's hand, there at the end. He scrabbled for purchase on the tree with his free hand, his legs rubbery, as Jack took him there, knowing and sure, squeezing the head at just the right moment, leaving room for Daniel's shot to clear his fingers and spatter into the leaves.

Daniel's hand stuttered, but he got right back to business, panting, eyes squeezed shut, the competition thing again. It was weirdly gratifying that Jack was not too far behind him. Jack grunted, but silently -- Daniel felt it as a nudge to his elbow, a sonic disturbance -- and sagged backward a little, and then he was coming. Daniel watched. He timed it right; with relieved self-congratulation, he noted that nothing spattered on Jack's pants.

Daniel felt blasted. He sagged forward as Jack sagged back against the tree, but Jack's firm arm caught him, giving him a reference point. Daniel, still holding on, jerked in an aftershock and felt an answering pulse in Jack's half-hard flesh, which he was holding a little too tightly now. He leaned forward against Jack's arm and found his balance again. He shifted so that his feet would hold his weight, and looked up.

Jack's eyes were closed and he still had his hand on Daniel, and then he opened his eyes and his smile was predatory. He squeezed Daniel once and let go. Daniel was pretty sure etiquette dictated that he had to let go when Jack did, but he was reluctant. It was like breaking a connection between them that Daniel wanted, unexpectedly, to hang on to.

Jack rubbed his hands and reaffirmed with a glance that all the mess went to the ground and not onto them. Then his eyes met Daniel's. Jack managed to stare him down the whole time they were buttoning up. His gaze was not fond, but intent. Focused.

"Like I said. It's more fun with company." Almost a whisper. The words seemed too loud, too intense, Daniel's hearing -- all his senses, actually -- on high alert, strengthened and sensitized by the afterglow. Jack's fingers flew, fastening buttons, his belt. Daniel felt slow, like he took too long with the same task. Jack watched him, turned a little toward him, leaning back on the tree, his hands behind him. Daniel registered again that Jack still had his cap on and that struck Daniel as hilarious. Daniel found himself staring, at Jack's face, at his mouth, but he couldn't seem to stop. Jack gave him the cryptic half smile and reached for him, jolting Daniel right down the backs of his legs, not knowing what Jack intended. It was still shocking, unbelievable, how Jack had gotten into his space. But all Jack did was take the loose dangling end of Daniel's web belt, and slide it through a belt loop, all tidy. He gave the belt a pat, just exactly as he'd done in the gate room a hundred times, to Daniel, to all of them -- fixing a strap on a backpack, smoothing the velcro of a pocket flap. The ordinariness of it was stunning. Daniel looked up again and met Jack's eyes, and Jack winked at him.

_!!!_

Then Jack turned on his heel, and Daniel followed him back to camp.

Lying down in the dark, conscious as never before of Jack's warm bulk next to him, close enough to touch, the comforting whiff of his sweat and anti-perspirant, and a new scent, a lingering rich smell of come, Daniel felt the whole thing to be vaguely incomplete.

"Um, thanks," he offered.

"Any time," Jack said, drawling a little. He had rolled to his side, facing away from Daniel.

_Does he mean that? How can he possibly mean that?_ But there was nothing to do but roll over and try to follow the ebbing endorphins into sleep. Daniel could indeed sleep -- the body's sated happiness more than enough, for once, to comfort his jumpy mind.

The next day, Daniel watched Jack, curious, with an itch awakened. Jack treated him exactly the same. But he was hungry. Daniel had acquired a new appetite, and he didn't know the rules for sating it. But he's a terrific observer. He'll learn. He feels... initiated. Jack has offered him something, invited something? If it's a puzzle, well, Daniel can solve it. If there are ropes, Daniel will learn them.


	2. Something Else Guys Do

Daniel has an itch.

Oh, Jack treats him the same. The same kind touches, the same sarcastic banter, the same half smiles. But Daniel's seen his face, touched with silver by alien moonlight, slack with pleasure at the moment of climax, pleasure put there by Daniel, and so, Daniel has an itch.

"You gonna eat that?" Daniel pointed with his fork at the remains of Jack's breakfast.

"Is it on my plate?"

"Yes, obviously, it's on your plate."

"Then I'm gonna eat it."

Jack turned back to Teal'c, making some point comparing the philosophical nature of offense in hockey with offense in baseball, and Daniel stabbed the last neat triangle of sausage and put it in his mouth. When Jack looked at him, eyebrows up, ready to protest, Daniel smiled and licked his lips. Jack paused, swallowed, and turned back to Teal'c.

The unacknowledged flirting, the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't attraction, was making Daniel crazy. He had always accepted it from Jack -- the warmth, the touching, the kidding around, without knowing exactly what it was. And most of the time, he realized, he was not even very curious about it, distracted as he'd been, then bereaved, and then grateful. Now, it just made him crazy, like a translation he'd almost-but-not-quite gotten. Exactly like an itch.

It made him crazy enough to linger, instead of looking for an excuse to leave early, at one of those solidarity-building, beer-and-poker night things that Jack hosted, this one in the wake of having to reconstitute two teams after fatalities.

The party was a success, in terms of catharsis and team-building and the solidifying of subtle changes in two chains of command. It was good of Jack to do it; good and right and appropriate.

Daniel sometimes overlooked that Jack was, in fact, General Hammond's second, and though Jack tried to downplay his leadership duties except in the heat of the moment, in actual engagements or crises offworld, he was, in fact, very good at them. As this event demonstrated. Daniel had no trouble, ever, remembering how decisive and high-handed Jack could be in a command situation, since so often Daniel was struggling with his command, trying to point out non-military solutions under the severe duress of time pressure, but there was more to leadership than making snap decision on the basis of inadequate information in the field.

Tonight, kneeling in front of Jack's kitchen sink, looking in the cupboard there for more garbage bags, Daniel actually felt a little guilty, a little selfish, that he'd been so distracted for so long from this part of the bigger picture of the SGC, of Jack and Hammond's work. But, well, Daniel's picture, in general, was plenty big enough, he felt, thank you very much. He normally just didn't feel obligated to worry about the military; they could take care of their own. He was usually more concerned with alien peoples, the galaxy, the universe, the Enemy. _That_ big picture. And lately, occasionally, he'd been getting very selfish indeed, and thinking about himself. The non-intellectual, non-strategizing, non-verbal parts of himself. And Jack. Hence the itch.

He shook out a garbage sack and glanced around at the messy kitchen. Daniel certainly wouldn't admit to having planned anything for this party, nothing so crass, so petty. But his dreams and his daydreams and his downtime were being haunted, overtaken. And in typical overachiever fashion, because it was something new, he couldn't stop wondering about it, couldn't stop theorizing, and playing out scenarios of how it could be. He had been alternating doing that with replaying his vivid memories of _that night offworld,_ of the feel of Jack's hand. So no, you couldn't say he had any plans for tonight. But he had concrete, specific notions about what might be next, what the next something else might look like, involving more and different varieties of Jack's skin. One idea, in particular, was quickly developing a pride of place, a kind of pinnacle of a Maslow's hierarchy of Things Desired Regarding Jack's Skin. A something next which Daniel, standing there, hands busy, in Jack's kitchen, owned up to craving, almost needing, to place in the realm of the possible.

So Daniel had socialized, charmed, talked, laughed, drunk, and then, switched to water well before the facedown-in-the-cheese-dip stage. And as the party dwindled, Daniel went in the kitchen of Jack's comfortable house, and made himself useful.

He cleaned up, killing the bright fluorescents and working in the gentle dusk of the under-cabinet lighting. He wiped counters. He dawdled. He separated the beer bottles into colors, bagged up paper plates and empty dip containers. Nothing fancy, the food. But it had been satisfying, and the event had been fun. People had laughed, had cried, had felt the possibilities and not only their losses. It had moved beyond feeling like a wake, and into talk of the future. It had been a good party and a good call on Jack's part.

Daniel heard the front door close on the last of the new SG-6, and Jack wandered in, crossed to the fridge, opened it.

"Oh. You're still here."

"Yup," Daniel said, and eased closer, putting down an empty Labatte's bottle, and when Jack bent to rummage, Daniel eased closer still, and when Jack turned, closing the heavy door, a nightcap beer in his hand, Daniel was right in front of him. On his knees.

Jack gasped.

Daniel didn't look up. He looked at his hands, which were below eye level, gently cupping the hard swell of Jack's thighs. Jack was wearing a well-washed, forest green, heavy cotton button-down shirt, which was stuffed into his Wranglers, and a very old leather belt. Jack was very still.

Daniel said, still not looking up, "On P3X-277. What was that about?"

He heard the clunk of glass bottle connecting with Formica. Jack's voice wasn't too steady. "Something one does." Jack's hands came, empty, to his sides.

Daniel squeezed, admired the smooth curves of muscle that were Jack's quadriceps. He'd healed beautifully; there was no scar that Daniel could feel, no lasting souvenir of Netu. Or, maybe, if there was a scar, it was indistinguishable by touch, and would be only visible, a white, hairless slash. Daniel had, as always, prevented himself from looking for the scar when they were together in the showers at the base. The scar, if there was one, would be right there, there where Daniel's hand was sweeping slowly, firmly upward. He let his left hand drift to a stop where the outer sweep of quadricep became pelvis, and curved into a sweet hollow, and let his right hand continue up until a finger was pressing the tongue of Jack's zipper. Jack was unmoving, as still as if he were deep in cover, listening for an enemy. He seemed to be holding his breath.

"How about this," Daniel said, trying for conversational, though his mouth was dry and his ankles were starting to ache from the unaccustomed position. "Is this something one does?" Daniel took hold of the tongue of the zipper and started to pull it down.

Jack cleared his throat. "On occasion."

Daniel looked up. Jack was staring down, and his eyes were deep and stony. Daniel felt his own eyes narrow and his breathing accelerate. Jack made his lips into a line, and glanced around. The kitchen was mostly interior; Daniel had closed the blinds of the lone window over the sink already. He watched Jack note this, as Daniel eased the zipper down and popped the snap. Tonight Jack was wearing boxers.

Jack put a knuckle on the countertop.

It was very different from that night offworld, for several reasons. It was a new angle -- eye level with Jack's hips. And in the yellow light in Jack's warm kitchen, Jack's skin was warmer, too -- realer, somehow. Before, there had been silvery moonlight, and Daniel had watched from above, stunned and crazy, distracted by his own arousal and his own climax. Now, he could focus entirely on what he could see, what he could touch, what he could taste. No distractions.

Jack didn't speak, didn't move, didn't grab his wrist or swear, and that was all the permission Daniel needed to undo Jack's belt and ease his plaid boxers and his jeans down until his dick sprang free.

Daniel had always been a quick study.

Daniel smiled, slid his left hand around to the satisfying curve of Jack's butt under the warm denim, and flattened his right hand so that the web of the thumb connected with the base of Jack's dick, his fingers tangling pleasantly in the curl of hair. It was brown, not gray at all, Daniel noted distantly. He remembered this vividly, from that night -- how it felt to touch, warm and smooth and familiar and someone else, not yourself. No "connect," like when you were alone with your own right hand, no feedback loop between the fingers and the brain. This was more distant, but yet more intimate, more scary, because you had, always, the knowledge that someone else was attached to this dick, this familiar piece of flesh, designed for pissing (mundane) and coming (ecstatic).

Daniel parted his lips, tilted his head forward and his eyes up, and Jack was staring at him. He smiled as he let the tip of Jack's cock slide between his lips, let his tongue caress the notch. Desire met reality, and desire melted. Daniel closed his eyes for a while, tasting, exploring, never fully closing his mouth around Jack's dick. Jack was so hard, so warm, so smooth. When he looked up again, Jack was still looking down.

Jack was frowning, but it wasn't a bad frown. He looked a little amazed, maybe puzzled. Daniel had been reveling in the way the slightly softer head contrasted -- and here Daniel let his lips bump, still trying to hold Jack's eyes -- with the slightly harder shaft. As his lips moved from the plush head, closer in to Jack's swiftly heating body, the skin was first thinner, with a surprising beat of pulse against Daniel's lower lip, then thicker. How much would fit? How far could he slide Jack in? A pleasant problem to experiment with.

Daniel closed his eyes again, foregoing sight to concentrate on taste, on touch. He curled his fingers, scratching a little, into the hair, and used his other hand, on Jack's ass, to push a little, to encourage him to rock into Daniel's mouth. Jack shifted his weight and groaned, the seismic tremor of his feet dislodging something in his throat. Daniel's smile died, because it was much, much more important to close his lips firmly around, to blanket his bottom teeth with his tongue, and jut his chin, several times, but just a little, not too much, just getting used to the push of Jack's head against his soft palate, remembering how to do this, how to get Jack deep.

Jack felt the rhythm Daniel suggested, and his hips and his thighs took it up. Daniel breathed through his nose, nearly all his attention on his mouth, yet feeling the pulse and push of his own arousal, completely content to neglect his own dick in favor of Jack's. Jack was filling him, gently rocking with him.

He took his time, moving his hand a little tighter around the base of the shaft, doing most of the job with his tongue and lips, loving the fullness of the warmth in his mouth, loving the way it was satisfying like eating, like smoking. But like nothing else, really. Just mostly like sucking cock. It had been a long time. And it had never been Jack, before tonight.

"Daniel," Jack said, finally, a warning, though Daniel didn't need it. Jack was tense, all his weight on the balls of his feet and one straining fist, planted on the counter, knuckles white. Daniel smiled on the inside, never losing his seal on Jack's shaft, and dug his fingertips into Jack's ass, and Jack grunted his capitulation and lost it. He shot, long and slow, rich and lingering, and Daniel had remembered everything by then -- how it tasted, how to swallow; everything.

When the pulses finally stopped, Jack leaned back, pulling himself free of Daniel's mouth, and Daniel let him go, though he hitched forward as if to stop him and had to catch himself. He didn't want to stop touching. He let his hand slide from Jack's back pocket toward his knee. His right foot had fallen asleep, but he didn't care. He was very hard, very close, yet with no way of getting release, but he didn't mind. It was good to feel his dick straining against his zipper. Painful in a pleasant way, because it was another proof that this was real. He missed Jack in his mouth already. He licked his lips, wondering if Jack was watching him.

He tilted his head up, made himself take his hand from Jack's warm leg, and put his hands on his knees. He opened his eyes. Jack was breathing hard, leaning on the counter, still looking down.

"Whoa," Jack said.

Daniel took a deep breath and smiled, and registered again how good, how big and warm and alive, Jack had felt in his mouth. Daniel reached up and gently pulled up Jack's boxers, zipped up his jeans. He left Jack's belt dangling. He put a hand over his own dick, gave it a squeeze.

He met Jack's eyes again. Jack hadn't moved, had just stood there and let him do all that.

Daniel said, slowly, "Something one does. On occasion. Something guys do in a world without women."

Jack nodded. His eyes were dark, deep. Inscrutable.

Daniel went on, "You didn't do things like this while you were married."

A transient eyebrow dip of irritation, then amazement, wonder at the relentlessness of the question, all crossed Jack's face. He shifted his weight, put a hand to his head.

"Did you?" Jack's voice was irritated, yet his body was lax, his face confused -- still blurry from coming. Daniel could almost hear him thinking, _And now with the interrogation? At a time like this?_ and that made Daniel smirk.

"No. But I don't think you did, either," Daniel answered, still on his knees, all reasonable.

Jack stared at him, scratched the back of his head and visibly collected himself. He turned toward the counter, swiftly snapped his jeans and buckled his belt, and twisted the cap off his abandoned beer. Daniel registered again that Jack was wearing newish Docksiders, no socks.

"Aren't you theorizing ahead of your data, Daniel? And get up, why don't you."

Jack reached, and Daniel let himself be pulled up, staggering a little as his nerveless foot took half his weight. He was dizzy, blasted, aroused. Still too hard, a muddle of conflicting sensation. The dominant feeling, though, was triumph. He put a hand over his dick again. It felt good, the warmth, the pressure.

"Oh, I have plenty of data." He smiled with quiet glee. "I just don't know what it means yet."

Jack took a swig of beer and looked at the bottle, as if reminding himself what he was drinking. "There's some porter left."

"Oh, good," Daniel said, and Jack turned and got him one out of a sloppily torn-open twelve-pack box, which was sitting on the counter near the fridge.

"Yes," Jack said distractedly. "Things always mean something." He squared his shoulders. He didn't look at Daniel. Now, he looked away with all the intensity he'd used to look at Daniel earlier. When Daniel'd been on his knees. Blowing him. "Thanks for that. You should go."

"I should." It was a question.

"Yeah. I think you should go now."

Jack stared at the tiles over the stove, and his knuckles were white on his beer. Daniel went cold, but there was something, something in Jack's tense shoulders, in the way he was hanging on for dear life to the bottle, that kept Daniel from getting angry enough to bait Jack about _wham bam thank you ma'am, no reciprocation and what was that about anyway_. Rules, rules. What were the rules, the ropes, the game.

Daniel drew a breath, studying Jack's profile. Was Daniel disappointed? Yes. Frustrated? Yes. Angry? Hmm. Why get angry? Not just yet.

He raised his chin, though Jack wasn't looking, and set his porter, missing only one sip, on the counter. He should go, Jack judged. So, he turned on his heel, on his wobbly ankle, and went.

It was cold outside, and cold in his car. He was glad. It sobered him up, right away.

And feeling like the thwarted acolyte of an extremely incomplete initiation, he drove himself home, jerked off to mental pictures of Jack, went to bed, and went on back to work Monday morning. As he, apparently, was supposed to.

Though he looked closely, there was no top-secret cipher for him to read in Jack's smile, no magic decoder ring left on his desk for unlocking the mystery that was Jack's heart, Jack's body. It was maddening; it was reassuring. Jack was still just Jack. He was still just the same -- sarcastic, tender, pushy, outspoken.

And Daniel still had an itch.


	3. On Occasion, Guys Do

"Ow! That's it. God-_dammit."_

Daniel slapped his neck, where a flying insect the size of a tropical dragonfly had just buzzed him. His electric lantern was drawing a scarily increasing number of the alien pests now that dusk was falling. He pulled his floppy hat off and waved it. He could smell dinner -- Teal'c's turn at mess -- and hear voices behind him. He was losing the light, but he hated to stop working.

"Daniel!" Footsteps crunched. Jack's voice was cheery; too cheery. Daniel knew this mood of Jack's well -- studied brightness masking cold calculation. At least, he mused, he could be grateful that he was getting politeness. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Daniel looked up. Transient storms had driven the four of them under the shelter of the red, sandstone-like ruins earlier, in the afternoon. Now clouds were building again, grey towers lit from beneath, even more orange than a similar sunset would be on Earth.

"Ow! What the-- Shit!" The giant bugs had found Jack. The footsteps came closer, loud in the rubble from the ruins. "Daniel, would you please turn off that bug magnet, come to camp, have some dinner, and give us the update on your progress, if any."

The bugs had now driven most of the cheery out of Jack's voice. Daniel scowled and began to shove his notebooks and reference books and home-made printouts into his knapsack. Yeah, it was simply too dark to work. He should stop, but... Another bug crashed into him. He rose and turned, walking heavily, tiredly, and followed Jack back to the camp. He couldn't help watching Jack's ass, displayed to perfection in the well-cut fatigue trousers. He'd touched it, once. He still wanted more. He'd flirted, and he'd looked, but he was continually feeling thwarted by Jack's cheery facade, and by his own, polite unwillingness to push any harder. Maybe Jack would make the next move, if there was one to make. Jack was a mystery, the rules of military guys were a mystery, and tonight Daniel was too tired to think about it beyond registering the ass perfection. He hadn't given up the game, the yearning. No. That was apparently impossible. He still wanted more, but he was resigned, for now, to not getting it. And right this second he was tired, and discouraged, and it was getting dark.

While he had continued attempting to translate the eroded carvings on the ruined walls, Sam and Jack had pitched the screen tent around Teal'c and the little stove. Jack zipped Daniel in, letting in two of the giant bugs, which Sam swatted with a pancake turner. Daniel sighed. He'd had such high hopes for this place. He set down his pack and his vest, wet some towels, and wiped the red dirt from his hands. Dinner was ready, and over the bland meal, he briefed his team as they sat around the stove. It made a poor campfire, but it was the thought that counted.

"These ruins are definitely quite old, as I suspected from the first MALP, but I guess I have to admit that I have seen nothing that would indicate conclusively that this is Kheb. I've found a lot of writing about local history, but nothing giving an explicit connection to the Jaffa, or anything at all suggesting this was ever intended as a refuge. It's been abandoned for centuries."

Sam spooned up her macaroni and cheese, listening. Jack was picking at his belt. Teal'c was drinking water and regarding him patiently. He looked down and doggedly continued. He was tired.

"But right before dark I had jumped ahead, deeper into the complex, by roughly a dozen panels, moved on to the inscriptions in one of the inner chambers, and that actually looks a lot more promising, I'd have to say. Not so much of the aphorisms and decorative carving, but instead what looks like a historical record or perhaps a annal, an archive, of some kind."

He paused and sipped at his soup.

Jack looked up. "So you want to stay until daylight and check it out, since it's so different from the first -- stuff." Jack waved his hand, vaguely. Yup, as usual, Jack was paying close attention even when it seemed he wasn't.

"It seems like a shame not to. It might even point us to another Heliopolis-type installation. I have no way of knowing yet."

"Okay, then. So. Camp tonight, check it out, leave at midday?"

Daniel nodded. Teal'c's silence meant agreement.

"Anything scientific to report, there, Carter?"

"Nothing too notable, sir, except the, um, giant dragonflies."

They chatted for a while about the flora and fauna, with the thunder rumbling in the distance, and Sam mused on how often she was called on to take organic or biological samples, which was really outside her training, and thus, pointed to the advisability of getting hold of some more biologists; perhaps even starting their own exobiology training center under the SGC aegis.

Daniel stretched out his legs and bumped himself off the fallen pillar he'd been sitting on, down to the packed ground. He'd bent over or crouched for most of the afternoon, and he was stiff.

He noticed Jack eyeing him, as Sam talked, and he had a flicker of wondering, through his fatigue. Would Jack judge this place safe enough for some quiet ... company? Maybe later he might, possibly, find out.

~~~

The night was hot, and humid, and the heat lightning and the thunder had increased as the evening wore on. Daniel crouched in the strange shadows of his penlight, by the tent entrance, fiddling with his boot laces, indecisive. The thwacks of the scary huge dragonflies had ceased, mercifully, as soon as it was fully dark. They weren't nocturnal, then, thank goodness. Jack was already lying down on top of his bedroll, a tiny, battery-powered fan humming near his elbow. He was so still that Daniel suspected he was asleep already, which didn't seem likely. Jack was in his t-shirt, but he'd left his trousers on, which Daniel passingly thought was odd, given how hot it was.

He fiddled, and fiddled, and waited for Jack to tell him to _go to sleep, lie the fuck down already,_ but Jack was silent.

He recognized what he was being indecisive over, what his nervous fiddling was about, clarity striking him as suddenly as the distant lightning.

"I'm, uh, I'm just going to... If you want to..." Daniel didn't look up, but he was stabbed by lust, abrupt and melting. He'd untied one of his boot laces, but he reversed himself and retied with crisp movements. His indecision was gone.

The words were barely out of his mouth before Jack was sitting up and reaching for his boots, as if he'd been waiting for Daniel to speak.

Daniel, boots tied, rolled over and hastily pushed himself out of the tent, taking his little light with him, and waited outside.

Jack was waiting for his signal. Jack still wanted this.

Memories, kept at bay, disciplined and compartmentalized under ordinary circumstances, flooded him.

_Jack's kitchen floor, hard under his knees, and Jack, hard in an entirely different way, in his mouth. The warm sour flood of semen; the very taste of Jack. Colonel Jack O'Neill, coming. In his mouth._

The look on Jack's face, silvery moonlight making all the angles sharper, when he came, climaxed, got off, because of Daniel's hand, because of Daniel's desire, on another alien world.

Daniel waited.

Jack emerged, impossibly gracefully, from their tent. He didn't look at Daniel. He had his own light, and he strode away, and Daniel followed him, past the scraped earth where the screen house had stood; past Teal'c and Sam's tent. Their radios crackled.

"Sir, is that you?"

Sam, walking the perimeter, had seen their lights.

"Daniel and me, Carter. Not to worry."

"Yes, sir."

Where would Jack take them this time? Daniel's groin tingled. He was already hard, walking a little awkwardly. He arranged his dick through the loose-fitting BDU trousers, and eagerly followed Jack's light through the pitch black.

Jack was heading for the far side of the ruins Daniel had been looking at earlier, his orientation and memory of the place unerring even in the cloudy night. Lightning flashed, briefly tracing Jack's silhouette -- his bare, silver head, the curve of a shoulder. Daniel inhaled, trying to stay calm, to stay ahead of the storm of his arousal.

Jack slowed, then stopped in the shelter of an alcove, behind the tumble of a fallen wall. He turned to Daniel and gave him a sidelong glance. Daniel knew what to do this time. He thumbed off his light, and put his back to the wall. He heard, felt, Jack do the same. By touch alone, Daniel found his buttons, eased his trousers down until they bunched comfortably around his thighs, and reached for Jack.

_God. Warm, so warm, so hard._

He wished he knew the shape, wished he had it memorized, wished he'd been able to look longer, to string out that few minutes in Jack's kitchen. He caressed the firm jut of Jack's dick, and closed his eyes against the dark. He had to lean back on the stone wall, still warm from the day's sun, as he felt Jack's hand on himself echo and elaborate on what Daniel was doing to Jack. He tried not to moan, but oh, how he wanted to.

Blurry, oblivious sensation, the shape of bliss traced in rhythm, loose fist around warm satin. Skin against skin. Daniel tried to breathe, tried to feel it all -- his own hand, the feel of Jack, his own quickly building pleasure. Without trying to, their hands set the same pace. He edged closer, so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Jack and could feel him breathing.

The blissful blur of synchronized motion went on for some time, and then Daniel started, his arm jarred away from Jack's dick, his hand cool and suddenly empty, a quickly drying slick of moisture across his palm. He started to speak, to ask, but Jack's hand on him never faltered.

He opened his eyes in astonishment and found he could see a little -- there must be some moonlight behind the thick clouds. Jack was moving. Jack was-- Christ, Jack, quick as a thought, was kneeling in front of him, and in one stunning slide had Daniel in his mouth.

"Oh god," Daniel choked out, and his hands flailed helplessly, and then one was captured in Jack's firm grip, pressed against the wall, and Jack was sucking him, using his other hand to keep up the stroking, and Daniel knocked his skull against the wall and tried his damndest not to let his knees buckle.

Beautiful, perfect, wet, warmth, mouth, tongue, _Jesus,_ this was Jack, Jack, sucking him off, right here on this planet that wasn't Kheb, right here up against this inscrutable red wall, inexorable, glorious, amazing.

Daniel bit his lower lip and came, helpless spurts into the welcoming warmth of Jack's mouth.

_Jack's mouth._

He was done, then, done and done in, and he felt Jack swallowing, lips still around Daniel, Daniel still deep in his mouth, and Jack jerked and tensed and Daniel knew, _knew,_ even through his own blur of sated pleasure, that Jack had jerked himself off while he'd been blowing Daniel.

Daniel's hands were pressed against the wall; palms flat. At some point that Daniel hadn't been able to notice, Jack had let go of his hand and, presumably, finished himself while he had Daniel in his mouth.

The knowledge of this, the gestalt surety of it, made Daniel's dick twitch.

And Jack was pulling away now, pulling away slowly, as if savoring every last taste, and Daniel was leaning back against the warm wall, eyes closed again, trying to piece together the blasted bits of himself, trying to make his body obey his mind's commands, just as soon as his mind had some commands to give.

Thinking was like pushing rope.

Daniel became aware that Jack's spit was drying on his exposed skin, and that, stunningly, surprisingly, he was alone. He straightened and frowned, listening, and he could hear footsteps, solid, careful footsteps. Receding.

Another crack of lightning, and a much closer roll of thunder. The flash showed him the little alcove Jack had chosen for them, empty except for himself.

_It's going to rain; and soon._

His fingers finally obeying him, Daniel pulled up his trousers, found his buttons, found his flashlight, and made his own way back toward the tent.

Strange, so very strange. Strange and dislocating and oddly annoying. Not that he had anything to complain about, after an orgasm like that... but ... this seemed... wrong. His feet crunched on the red rubble, his light illuminating his way, barely a yard ahead at a time.

So, he and Jack could do this; could do this stress relief or good clean fun or buddy handjobs or whatever Jack would call if it pressed, if interrogated. What had Daniel said that Jack had agreed to, so readily, back in his warm kitchen? Something guys do. That was it.

So this ... guy thing ... was okay now? A repeat performance had been staged. And Jack had returned the favor, apparently. But, once again, Daniel had more questions than answers. His body was delighted. His mind was frustrated. _Why had Jack left? Just walked away? What the fuck was that about?_

Daniel felt as disheveled as he supposed he looked. His thoughts were messy, piled up untidily, just like his desk back at the SGC.

He found the tent, crawled through the unzipped flap, left open for him by Jack (a good sign?), and his light discovered Jack's t-shirt-clad back, as Jack lay, on his side, on his sleeping bag once again, rolled close against his side of the tent. Well. That was clear.

Daniel snapped off his light. He could take a hint.

He pulled off his trousers, made sure his boots were ready to hand, pulled off his glasses, and lay down.

He was seized with an intense, almost grief-stricken longing, to see Jack's face, to look into his eyes.

If this was a game, the rules were turning out to be rather cruel.

He strained to hear Jack's breathing, and, straining, fell asleep.

~~~

Thunder woke them all; thunder and lightning and a torrential downpour, and soon enough they all judged it was better to abort the mission, to get out of there, to admit that it wasn't Kheb.

Dislocating, to go through the wormhole in the rain-soaked, streaming dark -- standing there watching the blue of the event horizon, the eerie red of the DHD, and then to emerge, no-time later, in the harsh fluorescents of the gate room, 1000 hours, Earth-time.

Jack was pissed, Hammond was distant, and the last thing Daniel remembered for a long, long time was the cold infirmary nurses, the needle in his buttocks, and his lasting, lingering stain of guilt and disappointment.

And when he woke up, in a storeroom of the SGC that he'd never seen before, he had a whole new set of troubles to worry about, and a new example of military jargon to distract him, a new word, to him. The word was _foothold._


	4. Tough Guys Don't Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This part occurs around and after the events of "Foothold" and continues through the time frame of the next few episodes.

In the night, the clouds had lingered and settled over Colorado Springs, drizzling a chill mist, but never actually raining. Daniel hated it that the weather matched his mood. In the gray morning, he leaned on his balcony rail for a while, drinking coffee. Then he went inside to pace.

_I ruined everything._

He missed Jack. He'd been irrelevant, pushed aside, used, his carcass on a hook in cold storage for days when the aliens took over the SGC, and the time he'd lost was fuzzy in his mind. It was like part of his brain had been turned into cotton candy. He had impressions of what he had experienced, overlaid, in a way that he knew was false, with the explanations, chiefly received from a very tired and distracted Sam and Teal'c, of what had actually happened.

He could imagine it so clearly, filling in the gaps left by their words, that he had to remind himself that he had not been on that plane, had not seen someone who was not Jack shot. By Sam. He had not been there. He'd been at the base the whole time; hanging in that storage room. He'd seen the bodies of some of the aliens. He'd held in his palm the device, the tiny alien disc that had made Sam think Daniel was part of the conspiracy to declare her insane.

Sam had been jarred to the bone by what she'd had to do. After, she was distant and professional, coping in her own way, retreating to experiments.

Daniel tried to hang on to his real memories of the days during and after the foothold incident, frustrating as they were, vague as fever dreams. Dim impressions of lights, an MRI-like machine, of the strange swaying space, cold and dim and vast. He'd gone down there, when it was all over, and looked around again. The people from Area 51 had stripped down all the alien webs, and the room was empty and bleak, like an abandoned barn, but Daniel had stood there, hands in his pockets, wanting to remember. He hated losing parts of himself.

The almost-disaster had also created a gap of time and missing events, of crisis not shared, between him and Jack. It seemed, now, that Jack preferred it that way. Daniel didn't know how to think about what had been going on between him and Jack. The furtive physical contact sometimes seemed as elusive and unreal as Daniel's efforts to remember what had happened to him during the alien incursion. Daniel sometimes wondered if he'd made up his memories of Jack's skin, Jack's mouth, Jack's hands, because they were so cut off, so cloistered now from all their other interactions. Because Jack's behavior in public had never changed. And Daniel was beginning to think the few encounters they'd had would be all; that it, whatever it had been, was over. Jack seemed to have retreated to an impersonal, relentlessly cheerful esprit de corps, as professional and involved as ever in their work, but Daniel wanted more.

He mulled and mulled over his memories of those nights off world, and wondered what he had done. Because he must have done something, to make Jack offer, then withhold, like this.

_Somehow, I ruined everything,_ Daniel thought, standing in his living room as he'd stood in the warehouse, eyes closed, feeling the air swirl around him.

He spent his three days of recuperative leave alone, mostly reading, with the television and the internet for company. It was lonely, it was familiar, and by the end of it he felt a little better about life inside his own skin. He also found himself possessed of a new determination to figure out what the hell was going on with Jack. Separate and apart from everything else, they were friends, though that word seemed extremely inadequate for the relationship they had developed since the day Daniel had so recklessly promised them success if that first team would venture through the gate. Since that day, Jack had been, and remained, an absolute landmark in his life, a given, like the sun or the moon. Like it or not. Understand it or not.

Daniel came back to work, rested, and restless.

Then, a victory. They saved Ska'ara, and, for good measure, indebted the Tollans to them once again. And maybe he hadn't ruined everything, because he and Jack worked together beautifully on the new Tollan homeworld. They seemed to be more of one mind than ever. Each bringing his unique talents to the job at hand. But it was bittersweet, and Daniel couldn't stop thinking of the incredibly horrible timing and twisted fate that allowed them to save Ska'ara but not Shau'ri. But, it was a victory. They saw Ska'ara home to Abydos, and they celebrated, quietly. It was good -- on a grand scale, and a selfish personal scale, Daniel had to conclude. He went to Abydos, dutifully, sadly, and took a look around. It was good. Then went home, drank too much red wine, looked at all his mementos of his marriage, and packed them all away again. The grief was getting familiar.

Their next mission after Klorel's trial looked to be a low-key one, another abandoned world full of ambiguous ruins.

They arrived just after dawn, local time, and they could all tell within a few hours that they probably wouldn't learn much; that they'd be back home right away. By midday, Teal'c was walking the perimeter, Sam was on a nearby ridge, trying to make sense of some faint and elusive energy readings, and Daniel was, once again, pondering a wall of scanty inscriptions, this time in Goa'uld, having completed his video recording first. The building, temple, way-station, looked like it had been bombed when half-finished. He sighed.

He heard Jack's step behind him, and he didn't turn. "Not much here, I'm afraid," Daniel said. Jack came closer and patted him on the shoulder by way of answer. Daniel turned, startled by the offered comfort, by the touch. It had been a while since Jack had offered that. Jack frowned, arrested in motion, his hand still on Daniel's vest, almost as if he'd surprised himself. Then Jack's hand tightened in the fabric, and pushed, and Daniel gave back one step, two, finding himself backed up to the stone wall. His pulse began to race, prompted in a Pavlovian way by his unsought but not unwelcome memories of that last time he'd been backed against a wall with Jack. But this was daylight; this couldn't be... What was Jack up to? Daniel waited, hoping to find out.

Jack moved his hand, sliding it to the grimy skin above Daniel's collar. He was still frowning, looking at his own hand, not at Daniel's face. It was his left hand. His right still cradled his rifle. Then he stepped in, pinning Daniel between his body and the wall. Arousal flooded Daniel, a warm rush up from his knees to Jack's palm on his neck. And Jack came even closer, and -- surprise! -- bowed his head to press his face to the other side of Daniel's neck.

He didn't kiss, though Daniel was certain that was what he was thinking. Daniel's hands were full, clutching his video camera and his notebook, which was full of loose leaves. He couldn't think, he held his breath, tried not to drop the camera. Jack was pushing close, lumpy tac vest, heavy butt of his gun, sharp hip, firm thigh. His lips, warm as blood, met Daniel's neck. They stayed like that, frozen, for six beats of Daniel's heart.

Then the radio crackled, and Jack shoved him away.

"Colonel?"

Jack fumbled for his key. "Yeah."

Daniel stared. Jack didn't look ruffled, but he must have been. Because "Yeah" wasn't what he was supposed to say in response.

It was Sam, apparently oblivious to Jack's slip. "I've gotten all I can get, sir. I'll have to boost what readings I have and analyze them back at the base. Inconclusive and faint signatures so far."

Jack had apparently recovered. His voice was crisp and neutral. "Roger that. Teal'c, you can head on back to Daniel's building here."

"Acknowledged."

Jack let his left hand drop away from his radio. He stared at Daniel a long moment, inscrutable, and turned away, heading for the half-fallen entrance.

Daniel stood there in the shadows. He shook his head. This couldn't go on.

But he waited inside, making a few final frustrating notes, until he heard the voices of Teal'c and Sam outside. It was time, once again, to go.

The one interesting thing they'd found, earlier in the day, was debris from what Sam judged to be some kind of Goa'uld remote sensing device, something they hadn't seen before and that Teal'c did not recognize. Sam, always a glass-half-full person when it came to the possibilities of technology, was excited about it, and chattered at Teal'c on the short hike to the gate about alloys and oxidation rates and the meaning of the color of the rust on the device's remains. The two of them didn't seem to notice that Daniel hung back, slowing his steps, forcing Jack to hang back, too. When they left an alien world, Jack always went through the gate last, if he could manage it. He wanted to know the rest of them were safe; he wanted to follow them home, not lead the way, whenever he could. So Sam dialed, still chattering, and Jack waved them through, and Teal'c and Sam disappeared. Then, right up on the platform, a yard away from the shimmering surface, Daniel stopped and turned and put his hand on Jack's chest.

"What's going on, Jack?"

Jack tensed, resisting the question with his whole body. He raised his own hand and laid it over Daniel's as if to push it away, but he didn't. He glanced at the gate, and frowned at Daniel.

"We can't talk here. There's no time."

Daniel stood still. He found he was willing to piss Jack off. He'd just about had enough. "We can't talk anywhere."

Jack drew a breath, huffed it out. He did push Daniel's hand away then, and he looked at his boots. For once, he didn't pretend to misunderstand. "I'm not supposed to want this, okay? I'm not supposed to want this, or daydream about it." He looked up again, his gaze so intense that Daniel wanted to step back. "Or, look _forward_ to it. _Plan_ it." He spat out the last few words, as if they tasted bad.

So. Even though it'd been weeks since _it_ had last happened -- and Daniel smiled at their shared, ambiguous pronoun -- _it_ was as real and as disturbing to Jack as it was to him. That was somehow reassuring. But before Daniel could frame a reply, Jack grabbed a handful Daniel's jacket sleeve and stepped through the gate, pulling Daniel with him.

~~~

That night, Daniel was folding laundry, clothes scattered all over his living room, when Jack knocked. He knew it was Jack. He didn't have to ask himself why he knew, but he did.

He leaned back on his haunches where he sat on the floor in front of his sofa, covered with neat piles of underwear and t-shirts and rolls of socks. He sat there, feeling ... nothing ... at first.

_Okay, not nothing. What._

Jack knocked again as Daniel hesitated.

_Sadness, regret, desire._

Dammit.

Jack knocked a third time. "I know you're in there; I see the light."

Daniel got up to let Jack in. He didn't sigh.

Jack pushed by him, a whiff of leather, and autumn smoke, and good whisky. Uh-oh.

Jack looked at the cluttered sofa, swung a little unsteadily on his heel and took the armchair.

"Daniel!"

Daniel stood there, holding a sock.

"Offer me a drink?" Jack slapped the arms of the chair and looked expectant. He hadn't taken off his bomber jacket, but he didn't seem to have noticed.

"I think you've had enough," Daniel muttered, but he tossed his sock on the sofa and went to the kitchen. He pulled a beer out of the fridge (why did he keep a six-pack of Heineken on hand at all times? Pathetic.) and poured himself a glass of cabernet from the bottle he'd opened two days before. His heart was pounding. Jack was here. Jack had come to him.

He handed Jack the bottle, and Jack grunted his approval and held it up to click against Daniel's glass. Daniel sat on the arm of the sofa. He sipped his wine and watched Jack take a long pull at the beer. Jack looked at him, accusing. He took another pull, killing over half the of beer. _Keep this up and you're staying whether you intend to or not, colonel._

Jack stood the beer on the little table next to his chair. He put his hands on his knees, held on tight.

"So. Explain to me why I'm going through this -- you with your two doctorates and your giant brain and your diversity-aware, multi-cultural tolerance, Doctor Jackson."

"Going through what?"

Jack looked at him like he was amazed Daniel couldn't follow him. Of course Daniel could, but why make it easy? If Jack was here to talk, he should talk.

Jack slapped the arms of the chair again. "Daniel! I'm not supposed to want this!"

Okay, well, Daniel could cut to the chase if Jack could. But it definitely was kind of annoying, for Jack to expect him to do all the work. Annoying, and flattering. He pondered where to start.

"Jack. There are gay airmen, gay pilots, gay officers. There always have been. That can't be your problem."

Jack was shaking his head, wincing. "The Air Force is my life!"

"Look. I can't solve this for you, if what you're having is an identity crisis. Do you seriously think there's something sordid or objectionable about what we did?"

Jack shook his head, apparently stuck. "I'm not supposed to want this."

Daniel sighed. "Setting aside the part where you're making me crazy, and tormenting me with the secret hand job thing, which you have to know I think about, and you know I want, too, how do you expect to countenance coming to me for absolution about ... what? Not being comfortable with having sexual encounters with men? Why I am I your therapist? That's twisted, and, I'm not that noble, and, just, don't."

"Blow job thing."

"Okay, yeah, that, too. The hand job thing and the blow job thing, too."

They stared at each other, a standoff, which felt very familiar, except for the subject matter. They were actually talking about it. Or, talking about Jack. Jack seemed to lose his train of thought, and Daniel smiled a little bit. If Jack was remembering, well... Daniel made himself shake loose those memories of Jack's mouth, and look at Jack, really look at him. Disheveled, his expression a little soft, a little relaxed, from the whisky. He was gorgeous, damn him. The soft polo shirt, the leather jacket. Too perfect. Daniel narrowed his eyes. _Focus._

"Doing -- things -- with you isn't the problem, all right? That I have some experience with." Jack suddenly seemed to realize once again that he was, God forbid, _talking_, and blushed. He actually blushed. He looked down and found his beer, drank down the rest of it. Daniel shook his head. Well. This was progress. He supposed.

"So, what -- stress relief through blow jobs is okay, but actually liking the person you're blowing isn't? That's crazy!"

Jack covered his eyes. He was still blushing. "You'd better bring me another beer."

"You'll end up staying here or calling a cab if you do that."

"How do you think I got here?"

"Oh." Daniel took another swallow of his wine, set it down, and went to get Jack another beer. This was shaping up to be one of the most surreal conversations he'd ever had. Jack's voice followed him into the kitchen.

"It's just easy for you. You don't get it, Daniel. There are rules. Real rules and unwritten rules. The Air Force."

Daniel went to Jack's chair, and, feeling momentarily magnanimous, twisted the cap off the beer and handed it over. Jack took it, looking up at him, almost pleadingly.

"Rules." Daniel said, contemptuously. "I can't believe you of all people are talking to me about rules."

"You have to have a good reason to break the rules, Daniel, when you break them. Not a ... not a ... selfish reason." Jack drank. "Oh boy, am I going to regret this in the morning."

"You haven't done anything to regret yet."

Jack peered at him. "That's what you think."

Daniel got up and found his wine and drained it. Better try to keep up. He paced, turning the goblet in his hands. He was definitely getting annoyed. "Jack, I am totally and completely not capable of talking you into something that should be self-evident. You know as well as I do how to make your own way within a hypocritical system. And don't sit there and tell me you need the Proud to Be Pink speech. That's, just, insulting."

"I'm not supposed to want this." Jack looked blasted, contrite.

"I'm really getting tired of hearing that." Daniel stopped, looked at him. "So, then, don't. Don't want it."

"Just that easy, huh. Just like that."

"Of course not. You know you're being unreasonable. And, and parochial. And ..." Daniel waved his arms. Words, for once, failed him. He pursed his lips, staring at Jack, and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

When he came back, Jack had shed his jacket and moved into the study and turned on the television. The conversation was apparently over. Jack drank two cups of Daniel's coffee and didn't say another word. Daniel blindly watched whatever old movie Jack had found on cable, and tried not to lose his temper. Unbelievable. Incredible. When the movie ended, Jack stretched, got up, looked around, and sighed. He went and gathered up his jacket from atop Daniel's clean laundry. Daniel followed him to the door.

Jack turned to him and gave him a long, assessing look. Daniel stood there and took it. He wasn't going to lift another finger. This kind of sales job was not what he had signed up for. What had Kevin Costner said in that movie Sam had made them all watch once? The chick flick masquerading as a baseball movie? _"I don't try out."_ Daniel had been bored with the movie, as bored as Teal'c, but Jack, amazingly, had liked it. Sam had been pleased. But the sentiment was a good one. Daniel didn't fucking try out.

Jack stepped to him and hugged him, suddenly, tightly, wholeheartedly. Daniel, stunned, couldn't not hug him back.

~~~

The next mission found them heading for an idyllic beach, but what they ended up with was a nanite-induced, group hallucination. And to Daniel's disgust, their recuperation featured a week on the beach during which he was treated to watching Jack flirt with Sam.

But shortly after that display of ego-boosting, macho posturing, all his egalitarian, same-sex-sex-is-normal, righteous indignation was swept away. Because with Jack trapped on Edora, Daniel didn't have much to think about but how much he missed him, how much he would do get him back, and how little it mattered what Jack could or could not give him if Jack was gone forever.

_You'd think I would have learned that particular lesson by now,_ Daniel thought, one midnight in the lull of a brainstorming session with Sam about the energy beam. _You'd think._

~~~

Daniel leaned on the cold concrete of the control room, grateful for the mountain's roots that held up the wall, and so, incidentally, him. He needed something that big to lean against right then. He was dizzy, off balance, as lost as a moon would be if its planet had exploded to bits.

Jack was going; he was right there, about to go, standing there on the ramp, duffel in hand. Jack had finally blown a gasket over Washington's insanity, and he was going back to Edora and to Laira.

It was over. It was wrong; fundamentally and totally wrong. It was so wrong that Daniel could not bring himself to acknowledge it, could not participate in any sort of farewell, could not look Jack in the face, not even to say a final goodbye. It was impossible. It was wrong. But it was happening.

~~~

Daniel spent two full weeks on base training Nyan. Teal'c hovered -- grateful, cooperative, even expansive. It was fun, teaching again, and it was also incredibly practical. Daniel could certainly use some help. It was always an uphill struggle; to make the military understand that context, that history, that the slow drift of cultures was actually timely and important. The pragmatic soldiers and airmen he had to deal with, even the officers, seemed to learn only the history that helped them understand how to wage war. They were so narrow! They didn't seem to comprehend how incredible it was that much of human history was artificial, imposed by the Goa'uld. Daniel was only at the barest beginning of shaping his own theories on it. That was what he was always scribbling at, around campfires, at home when he had a minute to spare from mission reports or the always-too-hasty analyses of what they found on the endless string of planets they visited. When he wasn't mourning Shau'ri, or obsessing over Jack, or thinking about Kheb and how to find it, that was what he contemplated: The top-secret rewrite he had under way of the entire human record, happening utterly out of sight of the mainstream. It was, well, boggling. That overused word....

It would be one contribution he could make, and one he took seriously: putting it all in context, finding and marking the trail of Egyptian/Goa'uld influence. Galactic history, not just human history. It was overwhelming. It was wonder-full, in the broadest sense of the word. So Nyan was a worthy companion on that journey. Nyan understood.

But besides what he felt he owed to history, Daniel had another pull on his soul. Soon, he had to go back out there. He had to find Shau'ri's son.

And that was one thing he had found that he had in common with Jack. Jack understood urgent. Jack understood the relentless setting of priorities. He'd actually, if he were honest, learned how to do that from Jack, along the way. He'd learned how to prioritize, and to summarize, to bottom-line the complex, to drastically oversimplify and to cut to the chase. He and Sam would roll their eyes and delete all their scrupulously honest, scientifically necessary, speculative hedging. Jack made them. Sometimes he felt like a goddamn journalist. It was maddening.

But Jack was, well, _seeing_ him again, after they brought Nyan back. Jack had noticed, and admired, how Daniel stood up to torture, how Daniel was essential to holding off the aliens until Teal'c sprang them and got them home.

Since the revelation that Jack's latest retirement had been a hoax, Daniel had been forced to forgive him, to accept that everything was back to what passed for normal. That the rift he'd felt had been an illusion, a subterfuge, a duty. That had been hard, but Daniel had been grateful that he hadn't lost Jack. Not to Laira, not to fate, not at all. It was dislocating.

And, now, it seemed Jack was _seeing_ him again. Because even whipsawed by the seeming betrayal that Jack and Hammond and the Tollans and the Asgard had put them all through, Daniel had always _seen_ Jack. Apparently, he just couldn't help it.

So with Nyan well-launched on his career as Daniel's second, and settled into an apartment on base, Daniel had taken himself home for the weekend. He was looking forward to digging into a backlog of new releases in Egyptology, even though it was simply more of the bibliography he would someday get to publicly refute. He was on the sofa, notebooks spread around him and stacked among the open, crisp volumes, everything surrounded by a jumble of just-opened boxes from amazon.com, when there was knock at the door. Jack's knock.

Daniel closed his eyes, steeling himself. What would it be this time. The conversation about The Rules was all too fresh in his mind, though it had been months since it had happened. They'd gotten through some shit since then, found a new and graceful balance for their working relationship. But there had been no more friendly hand jobs off world. Daniel had not offered, and Jack had not. Nothing but the work, and a grudging mutual respect that Daniel admitted had once again become, for his part, not grudging at all.

He got up and opened the door. Jack stood there, in civvies, sober, a square sack under his arm that, by the oil spots and the aromas of ginger and nuts, announced itself to be carry-out Chinese. Jack smiled at him and leaned over to pick up the beer pack he'd put on the floor so that he could knock.

"Had dinner?" Jack said brightly.

"Actually, no," Daniel said, mildly, and stood aside to let him in.

Jack went straight for the table and proceeded to display what he'd brought, commenting on each dish, and Daniel brought plates and his good chopsticks, so he wouldn't have to use the splintery disposable ones that came with the food, and a backup knife and fork for Jack. Turned out the beer was Chinese, too.

Daniel set out the plates and utensils, and when he felt Jack's hand on his shoulder, he turned. Jack looked at him, and Daniel, once again, could not begin to read what was on Jack's face. Wariness, resolve, and something else. Jack brought up his free hand and put it against Daniel's cheek, and Daniel's eyes got wide. Jack closed his eyes and leaned in, and all the words in Daniel's mind dazzled into a white explosion, like a sunrise.

Jack kissed him, gently, intently. Daniel reflexively grabbed for Jack's arm, his hand closing around soft leather, and kissed him back. Daniel couldn't close his eyes. He couldn't quite believe it. Jack shifted his feet, still kissing, and gathered Daniel closer. It turned from one long kiss into several, still tender, still careful.

Jack leaned back, holding the hug, and apparently liked what he saw, because he smiled.

"Yeah," he said, and took a deep breath, and let go, and sat down and started dishing himself his dinner.

"Jack," Daniel said, left standing there. He grabbed the chair back for balance.

"Daniel."

"What was that."

"That was what we call a kiss, Daniel."

"Don't make me pour this beer on your head, Jack."

"Daniel! Sacrilege! Sit down. You wouldn't waste a good beer like that."

Daniel managed to sit, around the corner of the table from Jack, and made himself reach for a container. Jack looked just the same as he always did, plus he looked eager for the food.

"Since when does your interpretation of the rules include it being okay to kiss me."

"It doesn't."

"And yet?"

"And yet." Jack shot him a glance. "Eat first, therapy later? I'm starved."

Daniel gave him the eyebrow, but he was willing to eat.

Echoing the earlier evening, after the meal they took their next beers into the study, avoiding the book-strewn mess of Daniel's living room couch. Daniel felt giddy. Dates usually progressed in this fashion: Dinner, kissing, seduction. What in the fuck was Jack up to? And why was Daniel being such pushover, after the jerking around of the last six months? Was he that easy?

_Apparently._

Jack was leading the way into the adjoining room, and when he sat down on the sofa and picked up the remote, Daniel set down his own beer, plucked the remote away, took Jack's beer out of his other hand, and sat down heavily right next to Jack, way into his personal space. He took off his glasses with one hand and took Jack's jaw in the other. This kiss was wet and intense. Not tender at all. Jack, he noticed, gratified, was right there with it, all the way.

When Daniel pulled away, he nipped Jack's jaw, and then rested his forehead near Jack's ear. He could feel Jack's pulse pounding.

Daniel said, "Not too gay for you?"

Jack snorted. "You can handle the definitions, okay? Don't bore me with the details." Jack turned to him, hooked a leg over Daniel's knee and kissed him again.

"So," Daniel said, when they came up for air, "this is a very interesting way of doing psychotherapy."

"Beats talking, doesn't it?" Jack returned, and, indeed, no further words were said for quite some time.

Until Daniel came up for air to remind him, "Um, I have a bedroom. And a bed."

The kissing had been wonderful, and Daniel loved it, and now Daniel wanted more. Jack nodded, and stood up and held down a hand, and Daniel took it and got up. They went around the desk and into the bedroom. A lamp was on. Daniel could see Jack wasn't looking at him. Jack had started stripping clothes, mechanical. Daniel put out a hand and Jack looked at him.

"Just how conflicted are you about this?"

"Um, somewhat."

"Look. We don't have to do this. It's not supposed to make you miserable, okay?"

Jack looked away, threw his shirt into the corner, tore off his sleeveless undershirt and wadded that up and threw it into the corner, too.

"Work with me, Daniel. I'm nervous as a goddamn teenager, all right? It's not a very nice feeling, and not one I want to get used to. Getting naked and lying down in the dark sounds pretty appealing, okay? Do we have to talk our way through this? Say no."

Jack had that wild look, that "pushed to the edge" look. Daniel closed his mouth on whatever he'd been about to say and stepped to the lamp. He clicked it off. His back to Jack, he took off his sweatshirt and his jeans, left them on the floor in a heap, and slid under the covers and to the far side of the bed. There was light coming through the blinds from the street far below, and a diffuse, reflected light from the cloud cover. In a city like the Springs, night wasn't truly dark, not like the desert. Daniel waited. He heard a flat jingle that he supposed was dog tags, a clicking sound as they piled onto the wooden nightstand.

The bed dipped, the covers were tugged, and there was Jack, rolling up against him, warm and smooth and strong. They twined together, bumping knees, bumping dicks, both half-hard, Daniel was glad to note. Blindly, by touch alone, Jack found his mouth again, and Daniel was content, now. Content not to talk, content that Jack, despite everything, had found his way here, found his way to this private darkness, this quiet, warm safety.

Daniel murmured, low in his throat, and wormed an arm under Jack's neck, held him close, kissed him. He felt Jack's hand cupping the back of his head. Mouths open now, deep and wet, and Daniel was able to stop thinking entirely, and simply feel. The press of skin, the curve of muscle. The smell of Jack -- Chinese food, and beer, and something warm and sharp, like salted bread, or the big fattening pretzels Jack would get when they went bowling. Daniel was conscious of a formless, deep-flowing gratitude, of a joy that cut deeper than worry, deeper even than fear. Jack was here. Jack had come to him. He pulled him closer and kissed him, turn and turn about. He explored Jack's mouth, and then he softened and yielded and let Jack explore his. With a choked groan, Jack pushed with his tongue, and rolled as he did, getting clumsily over Daniel, half above him, one leg between Daniel's, his erection dragging against Daniel's thigh. Daniel gasped into Jack's kiss and slid his hands down, down, feeling the subtle waves of Jack's ribs, until he could rest his palms against Jack's ass. Jack was so hard now, hard as Daniel knew he was. Jack raised himself a little, getting his dick into the hollow of Daniel's groin, and pushed. Daniel moaned, his mouth still sealed to Jack's. Jack turned his head, a messy slide of lips, and pressed a kiss to Daniel's neck, then panted and pushed against him.

Close, too close. Going to come, very soon. But not like this. Daniel could hold, press Jack against him, but he wanted to touch. He wanted to take Jack in his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut, squeezed Jack's buttocks, and hooked an ankle over a calf. He turned them to their sides again and groped between them.

"God," Jack murmured, and Daniel felt him groping, too. They gave up on kissing, and their foreheads fell together. Time for the main event, apparently. Hands, working together. They always were both a little impatient. Everything fell away, everything but the intense pleasure of Jack's fingers around him. Familiar, the taste of his breath, the sound of him, panting, and this wasn't strange, couldn't be strange, not even to Jack, not even to the tough guy who knew how to get off, but had learned to hide his heart too well.

Now. Now. Now.

Daniel was never sure, later, who'd come first, but reality intruded itself again -- the vague ceiling, a weight on his chest and shoulder that was Jack's upper body, a sticky pool of come that didn't matter, yet. Slow, lethargic, to raise a hand to stroke the sweaty back. He felt Jack's breath against his neck. Daniel smiled.

Jack could speak. Amazing. "Okay, now, that was good. Very good."

"Thanks for that summation, oh eloquent one."

"Now you're just laughing at me."

"Hey, do what you're good at. But yeah. Definitely good is the word."

They lay there. Happy. Sticky. Together.

Daniel patted him. "Let me up, and I'll get a towel."

"Umph." Jack heaved himself to one side, cursed the wet spot he apparently found with his stomach, and turned to his side. Daniel found his way around the bed and into the bathroom. He didn't bother to wait for the water to get hot, but dampened a towel and took it back with him. He scrubbed at his stomach as he went, then sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for Jack to turn over.

When Jack did, he wiped him up, and Jack regarded him silently. Then Daniel pitched the towel on the floor, and slid back into bed. Jack rolled toward him, away from the wet spot, and gathered him close. Daniel felt sleep approaching, and sighed, pleasant and long.

Jack drew breath, and Daniel smiled when Jack began to speak. Oh yeah. More therapy. Daniel was in a mood to forgive just about anything now.

"What you had no way of knowing is that, the third time? You know? When I, uh..."

"When you gave me the blowjob. On the planet. After the first time, and after I apparently surprised the shit out of you by going down on you in your kitchen."

"Yeah. Then. That time. What you have no way of knowing is that, I, uh..."

"You never did that before? To a man, I mean?"

Jack's arms tightened around him. "No. Been on the receiving end, plenty of times, men and women, both, but, never...."

"Never wanted to do that to someone." Daniel frowned in the dark, trying to imagine how it had felt, for Jack. Rules, rules. What were the rules. "Never wanted to kneel to another man like that."

"All that. Stuff. Yeah."

"Jack."

No answering "Daniel," then, no sarcasm, nothing. Nothing but the comfort of darkness, and the familiar smell of his own bedroom, and the unfamiliar comfort of Jack's skin, Jack's warmth.

~~~

He woke alone to the smell of coffee, and when he went out to the kitchen, feeling blurry and a little lonelier than he'd hoped he would, there was a half page torn from one of his notebooks and propped against his empty cup; no words. Just two slashes and a semicircle: eyes and a smile.

He smiled back, and poured himself a cup of coffee.


End file.
